Searching multiple sources (e.g., web sites, repositories, databases, etc.) returns a variety of search results. These search results need to be sorted or ranked when presenting them to the user. Ideally, the results are sorted or ranked in terms of what the searcher most desires to see as a result of the search the searcher initiated. The preferences for ranking can be dependent on a user, a system, or an individual search being performed. For example, a computer coder may have an entirely different search object when searching for content as compared to a historian. One common method of sorting and ranking web search results involves pre-indexing the web sites to indicate factors such as links, frequency of terms of interest, etc. Search result rankings are determined based on comparing the pre-indexed results between the search results. However, pre-indexing all of the content a processing and storage intensive effort and is the same regardless of a user's preferences. Federated searching of multiple repositories enables ranking of results from external repositories. However, to date ranking of results by combining rankings from external sources and internal sources (e.g., a repository associated with a content management system being used to conduct a federated search) is not possible in a typical prior art system given the different information available as returned from an internal source search as opposed to an external search source